Weekly Feature

Leslie Hsu Oh is pictured here with her family at the cliffs of red Lockatong argillite and Brunswick shale along the Tohickon Creek, Pennsylvania. [Photo] Joe Forte

K’e yil yal tx’i: Saying Something

by Leslie Hsu Oh

In this Climbing Life story from Alpinist 58, Leslie Hsu Oh takes her kids climbing and observes them learning lessons that took her a lifetime

A view of Cerro Trono from the east side of the Cordillera Sarmiento. [Photo] Whitney Clark

A foray into the ‘Never-Never Land’ of Cordillera Sarmiento, Chile

by Whitney Clark

Last March Americans Whitney Clark, Jon Griffin and Tad McCrea ventured into a notoriously wet and seldom-visited coastal region of South America–Patagonia’s Cordillera Sarmiento–in hopes

Brette Harrington leads an offwidth choked with ice and sugar snow in the vicinity of Pitch 9 on Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m), Torre Central, Torres del Paine, Patagonia. She used a variety of tricks to make progress, including aid moves off her ice axes. [Photo] Drew Smith

Riding the Storm on Torre Central, Patagonia

by Mayan Smith-Gobat

Mayan Smith-Gobat returns to the Torres del Paine in Patagonia to attempt a complete free ascent of Riders on the Storm (VI 5.12d/5.13 A3, 1300m)

Mt. Mizugaki (2230m), one of the peaks featured in Kyya Fukada's 1964 classic, One Hundred Mountains of Japan, translated in 2014 by Martin Hood. "Can one describe this mountain as a medley of crags?" Fukada wrote. "It is not the only mountain with crags, but what is unique about Mizugaki is the way it mixes its crags with its trees." [Photo] Satoru Hagihara

On Belay: A Thousand Days of Lapis Lazuli

by Keita Kurakami

After ten years as a boulderer, Keita Kurakami attempts what some other local climbers called impossible: a new free route on the daunting 110-meter Moai

Christ Healing the Blind, painted ca. 1657. Dawn L. Hollis observes: The image depicts the healing of two blind men recounted in Matthew 20:29-34. Their first sight will be of the mountainous vista that dominates the canvas. [Image] Philippe de Champaigne

Wired: Rethinking Mountain Gloom

by Dawn L. Hollis

Dawn L. Hollis challenges the belief in academia that people did not care for mountains until they began climbing them at the end of the

A Berec headlamp used by Martin Mushkin from the mid-1950s until 1980. [Photo] Michelle Hoffman

TOOL USERS: The Headlamp

by Paula Wright

In this Tool Users story from Alpinist 57, Paula Wright shines a light on the evolution of the headlamp. Since some climbers were still carrying

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A climber's bookcase. [Photo] Derek Franz

The Literature of Ascent

by Stephen Slemon

“Literary mountain writing may now be giving way to the selfie,” Stephen Slemon writes in this essay. “But this shift towards the visual media may

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Full Value: Degringolade

by Sibylle Hechtel

In this Full Value story from Alpinist 56 Sibylle Hechtel recounts a pivotal moment in her climbing career–her first first-ascent, in Canada’s Bugaboos, 1973. She

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Lungaretse (5870m). [Photo] Camilo Lopez

On Belay: Unattached

by Anna Pfaff

In this On Belay article from Alpinist 57, Anna Pfaff describes her adventures as she becomes “unattached” from maps, expectations and conventions and learns to

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[Image] Richard T. Walker. the fallibility of intent #1, 2015; cut-out archival pigment print; 32 x 48 in. Walker's work teeters between the humorous and melancholic, juxtaposing the sublime with what it means to be imperfect and ultimately human, wrote Amy Owen in a California Gatehouse Gallery brochure. Courtesy, Richard T. Walker

Off Belay: Beyond Conquest

by Mailee Hung

In this excerpt from Alpinist 57 Mailee Hung explores artwork by Richard T. Walker that “casts unease on traditional aspirations” and helps us consider “how

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Loulou Boulaz. In the 1930s, Boulaz was “the only woman in the race for the big north faces,” historian Rainer Rettner writes. “She was met with a lot of distrust by men.” [Photo] Sallie Greenwood

Local Hero: Loulou Boulaz

by Sallie Greenwood

During the 1930s, one woman joined the race to climb the feared north faces of the Alps, venturing into terrain then believed to be reserved

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The north face of Kumbhakarna, above local settlements. Some names of local expedition workers are absent from written records. For a few in this article--Penuri, Ungati and Tumba--where we couldn't find other sources, we relied on climbers' memories, and it's possible the real names might be different. [Photo] Javier Camacho Gimeno

2017: Ghunsa

by Dawa Sherpa

Local guide Dawa Sherpa describes what it’s like to live and work near the base of Jannu/Kumbhakarna–a mountain sacred to his culture.